Engaging White People to Work for Racial Justice

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WHITE RACIAL JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS

Promoting Racial Equity and Awareness (PREA) is a student group on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus whose members are working to build white pro-racial-justice community on campus and to support white students, ourselves included, in becoming better allies to students of color and other people of color who are members of the UW community. To get in touch with them, email preaoutreach@gmail.com or check out their facebook page here.

Challenging White Supremacy workshop organizers believe that the most effective way to create fundamental social change in the U.S. is by building mass-based, multi-racial grassroots movements led by radical activists of color. We also believe that the major barrier to creating these movements is racism or white supremacy. One way to challenge white supremacy is to do anti-racist training workshops in our own communities. CWS has worked in the broad-based radical, multi-racial community of the Bay Area since 1993.

CWS workshops have been designed by a group of white anti-racist organizers. We believe our special responsibility is to help white social justice activists become principled and effective anti-racist organizers — both to challenge our white privilege and to work for racial justice in all our social justice work.

We think that anti-racist training and organizing with white social justice activists complements and supports grassroots organizing and leadership development in communities of color. Both kinds of work are necessary to help build mass-based, multi-racial social justice movements.

Catalyst Project is a center for political education and movement building based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are committed to anti-racist work in majority white sections of left social movements with the goal of deepening anti-racist commitment in white communities and building multiracial left movements for liberation. We are committed to creating spaces for activists and organizers to collectively develop relevant theory, vision and strategy to build our movements. Catalyst programs prioritize leadership development, supporting grassroots fighting organizations and multiracial alliance building.

AWARE-LA is an alliance of white anti-racist people working together to combat racism within ourselves, our communities, and the world. We collectively develop our anti-racist practices and tools for nurturing anti-racist practice among white people and working in transformative alliance with people of color. We take collective action to build white anti-racist and multiracial alliances to challenge the white supremacist system.

European Dissent recognize that their varying ethnic histories have been forged into a common “white community” in order to nurture and sustain racism.

They work in consultation with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a national multiracial network of organizers who do training workshops in leadership development, community empowerment, and Undoing Racism.

Their goal is to be a visible force in the creation of a multiracial network of people intent on building working relationships between the white community and the communities of color in the struggle for a just society.

They do this by organizing training seminars in conjunction with The People’s Institute, through study and education; by expanding our membership and base of support; by engaging in public actions and community struggles which expose and combat racism; and by supporting one another in our efforts to undo racism in our personal and work lives.

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond is a national and international collective of anti-racist, multicultural community organizers and educators dedicated to building an effective movement for social transformation. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, affectionately known in the community as The People’s Institute, considers racism the primary barrier preventing communities from building effective coalitions and overcoming institutionalized oppression and inequities. Through Undoing Racism™/Community Organizing Workshops, technical assistance and consultations, PISAB helps individuals, communities, organizations and institutions move beyond addressing the symptoms of racism to undoing the causes of racism so as to create a more just and equitable society.

Rural Organizing Project’s mission is to strengthen the skills, resources, and vision of primary leadership in local autonomous human dignity groups with a goal of keeping such groups a vibrant source for a just democracy.

ROP is a statewide organization of locally-based groups that work to create communities accountable to a standard of human dignity: the belief in the equal worth of all people, the need for equal access to justice, and the right to self-determination. Starting in 1992, ROP’s challenges to the anti-democratic right have earned ROP a national reputation for being an effective grassroots organization that takes on the hard issues. The catalyst for ROP was the Oregon Citizens Alliance and their outrageous Abnormal Behaviors Initiative, which targeted gay and lesbian Oregonians for legalized second-class citizenship. Oregonians in small towns across the state were mobilized, many for the first time, as basic tenets of the Constitution were at risk through this ballot initiative. ROP stepped into this organizing opportunity to fill a niche the radical right was trying to claim

The Vermont Workers’ Center is a democratic, member-run organization dedicated to organizing for workers’ rights and living wages for all Vermonters.

We seek an economically just and democratic Vermont in which all residents have living wages, decent health care, childcare, housing and transportation.

We work to build a democratic, diverse movement of working and low-income Vermonters that is locally focused and coordinated on a statewide basis. We work with organized labor in moving towards economic justice and in strengthening the right to organize. We are committed to taking action on the full range of issues of concern to working people, and to building alliances nationally and internationally.

The Heads Up Collective is a white anti-racist, anti-imperialist project. We are rooted in the global justice and anti-war movements. We developed through the mass actions that rocked the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and through opposition to the right-wing military advances of the U.S. government launched at home and abroad after the devastating attacks on Sept. 11th, 2001.

The goals of the Heads Up Collective are:

1. To support organizations led by radical organizers of color working against the war and its domestic impacts.
2. Develop and support anti-racist analysis, practice and leadership in mostly white sections of the global justice and anti-war movements.
3. Create spaces that encourage a growing commitment to anti-racism in white communities.

Anti-Racist Working Group believes that a failure to confront white supremacy within our organizations prevents us from building strong organizations and coalitions that build the possibility of stronger movements. We believe that in order to have healthy coalitions with other grassroots organizations in the city, Common Ground must understand its access to privilege through its volunteers relative to allies, and use that access to support the capacity of organizations beyond our own We believe that this work begins with individual volunteers and organizers understanding their own positions of race and privilege in the context of post-Katrina New Orleans.
Since 2006 we have worked within Common Ground organizations to achieve our 5 mission points:

1. Build relationships and accountability with racial justice organizations in New Orleans.
2. Support and help institute more comprehensive anti-racist political education for Common Ground volunteers.
3. Support anti-racist leadership in Common Ground.
a. Support existing leadership to do anti-racism work.
b. Build leadership from within the ARWG.
4. Support more people at all levels in Common Ground becoming active in anti-racist work.
5. Support each other to approach this work with commitment, humility, and openness to learning.

Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites (CARW) is a group of white people in the Seattle area working to undo institutional racism and white privilege through education and organizing in white communities and active support of people of anti-racist, color-led organizations. We support the self-determination of people of color, honor their leadership and are held accountable to people of color-led organizations.

The Childcare Collective was formed both in response to the very real need for childcare among social justice organizations and as part of a long-term effort to build a multi-generational movement with parents, women and children at its center. The Bay Area Childcare Collective hopes to play a part in building a movement that recognizes and prioritizes the voices and political agendas of women and mothers, especially women of color, low-income women, and immigrants. The needs of parents have traditionally not been recognized, and parents’ access to quality childcare is sporadic at best. We are committed to provide grassroots organizations and movements composed of and led by immigrant women, low-income women, and women of color with trained, competent, patient and politicized childcare providers for one-time events or ongoing meetings. We are committed to taking leadership from the organizations we partner with, and we aim to help organizations take steps to organize self-sufficient, sustainable childcare if they identify that as an institutional need. We see childcare as a political act. To that end, we put the utmost emphasis on accountability, both to the organizations we partner with, and to the children and parents we work with. In order for any movement to succeed, its ideas must be passed on from generation to generation. The Childcare Collective works to make sure that children are enjoying themselves and are informed about the work that the parents are doing. We hope to help children realize themselves as valuable and important members of a community and a movement.

Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project (IJSP): is a NYC based, all-volunteer collective that comes together to think of and implement concrete ways to facilitate the work of low income immigrant and women of color led organizations.

Who’s in it? Folks in IJSP see ourselves as allies who want to make concrete contributions towards movements led by radical immigrant and women of color. We tend to be people who benefit from some kind of privilege or power, however each of us may define it (money, skin, status, sex). But we are diverse, of many genders, races, incomes, styles, ideologies and orientations. What binds us is a desire to be around folks who are passionate about ending all forms of oppression, and a drive to discover new ways of building a movement for collective liberation.

What are we about? We believe that communities directly impacted by conditions of imperialism must be at the forefront of any movement for social justice. IJSP finds its role in this movement primarily by supporting the leadership of low-income, immigrant and women of color led organizations. We currently work with Domestic Workers United, Desis Rising Up & Moving, and are part of the Peoples’ Justice coalition. Our work is flexible and changes but we regularly support DWU’s campaigns for fair labor and base-building efforts through monthly phone outreach, provide monthly childcare for DRUM, and organize Know Your Rights trainings, actions and cop-watch campaigns with PJ.

Y-Step: Y-STEP is a Bay Area-based racial justice education and training program for white youth.

Our mission is to build the collective responsibility of white people to confront racism and white supremacy by working primarily with white youth through workshops and trainings.

Our vision is that Y-Step will ignite inspiration and courage in other white youth and adults to stand up for racial justice, and continue to build a legacy of accountable white people planting seeds of hope, healing, and resistance.

Groundwork: Unitarian Universalist youth and young adult anti-racism training and organizing program

Build the GROUNDWORK for change! Be part of creating a radically inclusive, spiritually alive, and justice centered community!

GROUNDWORK is the Anti-Racism training and organizing program of Unitarian Universalist youth and young adults. GROUNDWORK trainers facilitate dialogue, education and organizing in congregations, schools and community groups, and are available to lead workshops, trainings and conferences.

GROUNDWORK trainers are youth (14-20 years old), young adults (18-35 years old) and adult allies. Our training teams have a balance of both White Anti-Racist Allies and People of Color, and strive to partner younger apprentice trainers with elder mentors. We use interactive, experiential learning and focus on community building and spiritual reflection. Our workshops are youth and young adult led and centered, and are available for participants of any age.

Anti-Racist Alliance: The ANTIRACISTALLIANCE is a movement to undo structural racism. We are an organizing collective of human service practitioners and educators whose vision is to bring a clear and deliberate anti-racist structural power analysis to social service education and practice.